B.C. Liberals spend $17,000 on Super Bowl ads

Officials said the amount went to pay for two commercial spots, one that ran before the game began and cost $648. The other aired during the game itself, the government said, and cost $16,380.

The advertisements ran only in the B.C. market, officials said.

Pat Bell, Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation, was not available for comment Monday to speak about the advertisements, which are part of a larger campaign by government to promote its jobs plan.

But New Democratic Party leader Adrian Dix said the choice to buy the ads shows the government is out of touch with people’s fiscal priorities.

“We all understand that government advertises for lots of things — there’s lots of health advertising, there’s lots of different things that’s part of providing public information — but in this case these are political ads in a year where they did a big HST ad buy,” Dix said.

“It’s clearly a branding exercise for the premier and her political plan.”

Recent documents show that as of December, the government had spent $866,697 on advertising for its jobs plan.

The government has been running more ads in the jobs plan campaign since then, and on Monday Dix speculated the campaign may have cracked the $1-million mark.

“The question, I guess, is whether people are getting value for money for that and what purpose the ads serve other than the political purposes of the government?” asked Dix.